


I need you, I don't need you

by mountainsbeyondmountains



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, One Shot, Snowed In
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:02:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27053848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mountainsbeyondmountains/pseuds/mountainsbeyondmountains
Summary: They’d sent their excuses, of course, which was at least more than Jon had done. But in the end the task still has to be done and so Sansa would do it alone. It seems like she always has to do the tedious, inglorious, necessary tasks alone.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 14
Kudos: 186





	I need you, I don't need you

“— _you were famous your heart was a legend—”_

 _“…_ and we’re looking at some heavy precipitation this weekend, maybe even turning into sleet or hail at higher altitudes. Not such a nice holiday, folks—”

“— _and if you send me for you know I’ll come_ —”

Sansa quits spinning the radio dial, turns it off for good. It’s mostly just static, this far north— where the sunlight barely pierces through the thick pine forest. The kind of half-tamed wilderness that cartographers once gave up trying to map and instead just wrote HERE BE DRAGONS.The landscape Sansa most often travels in dreams. Home.

She’d just wanted the music to distract her from what she knew was coming beyond this particular twist in the steep dirt road. The tree’s trunk is scarred and mangled from where the car hit it, but it’s still standing, still sighing in the wind. It’s strange to think that the tree had survived but her mother, her brother had not.

Not for the first time, Sansa wishes someone had accompanied her on this drive. It was unreasonable to expect Rickon to come, he was only eighteen and just finishing finals. Bran or Arya might have mustered some sense of familial obligation, though. They’d sent their excuses, of course, which was at least more than Jon had done. But in the end the task still has to be done and so Sansa would do it alone. It seems like she always has to do the tedious, inglorious, necessary tasks alone.

The front gate is rusted, and shrieks like a banshee when Sansa pushes it open. The garden is overgrown, though she can smell mint growing somewhere among the woods, and recognizes surprisingly resilient blue roses twining up the wall of the house. She suspects a family of red squirrels has conquered the attic, and even in late spring, there’s a harsh draft from a broken windowpane in the dining room. But otherwise her family’s old house is heartbreakingly familiar.

There are her father’s snow boots, gnawed by the dogs, next to the mitten tree filled with scarves and hats knitted by Sansa and her mother. The boys’ (and Arya’s) .22s hang on the wall above an anatomically misshapen watercolor Bran painted of Summer. One of Sansa’s novels has been abandoned on the living room ottoman, a bookmark protruding three quarters of the way through. Rickon’s crayon scribbles still mark the kitchen walls. A glossy framed photograph of Robb’s wedding has been transformed to an unexpectedly wintry scene due to the thick layer of dust on the glass.

Sansa wonders how on earth she’s supposed to be strong enough to do this— to wander through a memory, boxing up the possessions that she and her remaining siblings might want to keep, preparing the rest for the estate sale— without weeping a whole new saltwater tributary into the ever-unchanging lake that she can see beyond the kitchen window.

She’s just finished sifting through the dining room, carefully saving the good tea set that her mother’s family brought over from Ireland, and has decided to next confront the den when she hears a car park outside, then the front door open. Any fears of intruders are assuaged by the familiar clip of paws against hardwood. Sansa wonders which of her siblings’ dogs will round the corner, and is surprised to see that it’s Ghost.

When they first found the stray litter in the forest, Ned had theorized that they were part-wolf. It doesn’t seem so outlandish now as it did then. Ghost is a hulking white avalanche of an animal. Sansa greets him without fear, whispering endearments to him and rubbing his belly as he sprawls out on the carpet.

But she knows that if the wolf is here, his master won’t be too far behind. She could go to meet him. But she decides not too. She needs a moment to collect herself— let Jon call her a coward if he likes.

He doesn’t. Instead he stands in the doorway and asks incredulously, “Are you mental?”

“A pleasure to see you too, Jon.”  
“Sansa, I’m serious. I came to check on you as a precaution but I didn’t think you’d actually be here.”  
“I said I would be.”

“Do you know what the weather’s supposed to be like?”

For the first time in hours, Sansa looks outside. The sky is a thick grey quilt of clouds, and blue mist has descended on the shivering mountains. “It’ll be fine,” she says, trying to sound nonchalant. “I can cope with a little rain.”  
“It’s supposed be a blizzard. A bad one.” The look Jon is giving her is as grey as the cloudburst, and just as dire.

She knows that it’s a long lonely drive here from where he lives, not mention the border crossing. But he would’ve made the journey for any of the Starks. Even his least-favorite Stark. That’s the kind of man he is.

“I’ll be fine,” she repeats.

“I saw the car you’re driving. Does it even have four-wheel drive?”

“Stop worrying, I’m not so helpless. I’ll just wait out the storm here. Work through the night.” She doesn’t really sleep anyway.

Jon crosses his arms and says, “It doesn’t feel right, leaving you here alone.”

Sansa should’ve predicted he’d insist on chivalry. “That’s very kind of you but really, I’ll be all right.”  
Her words have about as much effect on him as a single gust of wind against an ancient mountain. So she tells him, “Well, if you’re going to stay, make yourself useful,” and gestures to the chaos of cardboard boxes and half-organized heirlooms.

“You’re not leaving?” Jon says.

She shakes her head. She knows how to be stubborn too.

Sure enough the first flakes tumble down the sky not a quarter of an hour later. Sansa watches the white dissolve into the pitch of the asphalt. In the early stages it’s hard to believe that something so gentle could ever transform a landscape, but she knows from experience that it will. How many times had her father warned them about storms, even in the spring? Ned Stark had lived with his hackles raised perpetually, and had taught his children to do the same.

Jon, who perhaps listened closer than any of Ned’s blood children, is already tugging on his coat and heading toward the back door. “I’m going to chop some firewood,” he says.

“That probably won’t be necess-”

The distant slam of the screen door is Jon’s only reply. As Sansa sits on the floor of the den with Ghost beside her, half-consciously recycling old newspapers, she tries to discern the reason why Jon is so unwilling to stay in her presence. The last time they’d seen each other was… Christmas. It had been dismal. She’d tried to replicate the glow of the celebrations her parents had hosted in this very house— wrangling what was left of the family, following her mother’s recipes, hand-cutting paper snowflakes to hang on the windows of her apartment— but the effort had only revealed her own failings. Arya had kept trying to show off the throwing knives Gendry gave her, Rickon had failed one of his gen ed courses, Theon had shown up delirious drunk, and even after Sansa had shoved him into a cold shower and given him a change of clothes, he’d proceeded to covertly get stoned with Bran. She and Jon had barely spoken; he’d brought his new girlfriend, with whom Sansa had argued about military intervention in middle Eastern nations. At a certain point the Christmas tree caught fire, and after it was extinguished, everyone unceremoniously went home. Sansa then drank what was left of the red wine and cried in the bath.

But that hadn’t been exceptional. It hadn’t been enough to make Jon hate her.

Maybe it was the same old trouble— her penchant for imperiousness, his unshakable self-pity. Or maybe he really did just want to chop firewood. Sansa watches him through the window. She’ll at least allow herself the indulgence of seeing his lean capable body work.

It turns out that his judgement was sound after all. There’s no power, no heat, no electricity— the house has been closed for over a year— and the snow continues to fall, softly, insistently.

“It’s waist-high now,” Sansa remarks. She’s just filled a kettle with snow to melt and boil over the now-merry fire, as well as scrounged up some cans of soup from the pantry that they can share for dinner. Jon sits on the couch he has dragged in front of the hearth, and she glances sly at him over her shoulder as she dares to add, “So it’d be up to your ribs.”

Mercifully, he grins.

The soup, and the musty blankets, and the flames aren’t quite enough to combat the robust chill, so Sansa makes conversations to distract them. She’s curious, as well, about his life. About him. “How’s work?” she asks.

“Good,” Jon says. “Challenging.”  
“That’s how you know it’s worth doing.”

“Yeah, I’d like to think we’re making a difference.”

Jon had enlisted at eighteen and then, after his honorable discharge and his stay at the hospital, he’d spent a winer working an oil line in Alaska. Sansa can’t fathom why. Then he’d followed a girlfriend to Canada and stayed there even after the relationship burnt itself out. Now he does youth outreach, nonprofit. Sansa imagines that he’s well-suited to it— stern when he needs to be, and patient when he doesn’t.

“What about you?” Jon asks.

“Well I needed to plan about four months in advance just to take the long weekend off. But it’s good.” She finds herself unconsciously echoing his words.

“Are you still with… what’s his face?”

“Harry.” It isn’t like Jon to forget someone’s name. “No, I’m not.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” She briefly tells him the story. They’d broken up on Valentine’s Day, after Harry accidentally gave Sansa the lingerie set meant for his side chick Saffron— both names beginning with the same letter, an easy mistake to make, she’d thought at the time with only a little bitterness. In the telling of it, Sansa means to sound lighthearted but Jon is now looking at her with an expression dangerously similar to pity.

“Don’t threaten to kill him,” she warns. Jon and Robb and Theon have— or _had_ — a tendency to come to her rescue, which is embarrassing.

“Just say the word.”  
“I’m not saying it.” Sansa concentrates on the shifting firelight and adds, “I can’t believe that I really used to think I’d be married by the time I turned twenty-six. I had it all planned out and everything.”  
“That’s how old your parents were when they got married. Right?”

She nods.

“So it wasn’t that unreasonable,” Jon says.

“Yeah, but in their case it was true love. Or as close enough as anyone can get to it.”

“Is that what you’re holding out for?”

“Yes. I guess that’s naive, though.”  
“I don’t think so.”

“Are you seeing anyone?” Sansa asks him.

“No. It’s on my mind, though. Settling down. I mean even just now I was thinking about when we were all kids in this house, and how it was wondered none of us ever got killed with the shit we used to get up to. It felt like an adventure but at the same time we always felt safe. Risk but also peace and quiet. And I guess I’d like to recreate that with my own, you know, family.”

“It was sort of idyllic,” Sansa agrees. “Remember how excited we used to get on snow days?”

Jon nods. “Once Theon and Robb and I stayed up because we were convinced we’d see the northern lights.”

“You can’t see them here, we’re too far south.”  
“My mom swears she saw them once.”

 _But Lyanna was a dreamer, S_ ansa is tempted to say. Unreliable. That’s why she’d left her son to be raised by Sansa’s own parents, and had only blown in occasionally, causing chaos and excitement like her own kind of blizzard. But she doesn’t say this aloud, because it would be cruel. And besides, Sansa herself has been called a dreamer before.

The next morning, the world resembles nothing so much as a vast, vigorously shaken snow globe. The snow reaches up to the window panes of the house; Sansa’s vehicle is nothing but an insinuation of a shape among the drifts; the thin spiral of smoke from the chimney is the only sign of life for miles.

They spend the morning digging themselves out. Jon finds two old shovels in the hall closet and Sansa forces herself to search through a box of her mother’s winter clothing, retrieving some boots and woolen socks and a sweater. Then she slips on an old sturdy stadium coat that used to belong to Robb.

The face Jon makes when he sees her—Sansa nearly resorts to the old cliche, _you look like you’ve seen a ghost,_ before she realizes that it’s all too prescient. It’s happened to her before. The man who got her her very first job had gone to college with her mother, and though he thought himself very clever, even he slipped sometimes and called her “Cat.”

She and Jon were in silence. Once the paths are clear and a path has been carved from the driveway to the front door, Sansa brushes the snow off the rocks in the backyard that mark Lady and Grey Wind’s graves. She stays out there longer than she should, gazing at the lake where they all learned to swim, at the tree Bran fell from like a bird leaving the nest too early. By the time Jon finds her— sounding slightly concerned as he calls out her name— the snow has soaked into her borrowed coat, her hair, even accumulated on her eyelashes.

“We should do the worst part first,” Jon says as they stand at the top of the stairs, staring down the closed doors to the master bedroom and Robb’s room.

Sansa agrees and is glad they’re deciding to be bloodless and prudent. Yet when she approaches the threshold of her parents’ bedroom, Jon lingers behind, reticent. She turns back toward him. “What’s wrong?”

He rubs the back of his neck as he stares down at the dust on the floor, the snowmelt still darkening the hems of his jeans. “I’ve never been inside before,” he confesses.

“It’s not haunted.” Sansa’s instinct is to take his hand, but she thinks better of it. Jon steps forward.

Once inside, they both single-mindedly set themselves to the work that needs doing. They’re both good at burying things. To keep from crying, Sansa absentmindedly sings to herself, doesn’t really notice she’s doing it until she catches Jon listening. She stops mid-note.

“You don’t have to,” Jon says softly, which she supposes is the closest he’ll come to admitting he’d like her to continue. So she does. Maybe the sound appeases whatever ghosts might be lurking in the grey room.

The only point of friction between her and Jon comes unexpectedly, the flint of her good intentions sparking against his stony pride. Sansa finds her father’s old wristwatch in the bedside drawer— an ancient, sensible object. She offers it to Jon, who brusquely shakes his head.

“Give it to Bran. It should’ve been Robb’s but—”

“You’re here. Bran’s not. I want you to have it.”

“It’s not mine.”  
There’s clearly no convincing him. Sansa holds the watch up to her ear. She can hears its steel heart beating despite all the years that have passed. The fact that it still works reminders her of the quiet reliable way her father used to love. The same way Jon does now. She decides that the only way he’ll accept the gift is if she hides it in the glove box of his car or something at a secret moment when he isn’t looking.

In the room she used to share with Arya, Sansa finds the old plastic tiara that she won when she was voted prom queen. She puts it on to show to Jon, thinking nothing of it except that maybe it will make him smile reluctantly. All his smiles seem reluctant and hard-won

And he does smile, at first.

“Did you even go to the prom?” Sansa asks him, leaning in the doorway to Bran and Rickon’s old bedroom. She has a hard time picturing Jon in a tuxedo.

“Ygritte would’ve laughed if I’d even suggested it.”

“But would you have liked to?”

He doesn’t answer, instead gestures to the glow-in-the-dark constellations scattered across the ceiling. A remnant of Bran’s astronomy phase. “I tried to take them off but—”

“I guess the realtor will have to deal with it,” she replies.

“Sure,” Jon mutters.

“You know, I just wanted to say…”

“What, Sansa?”  
“Thank you for helping me. I know the circumstances are weird but I was really dreading doing this and you made it so much easier.”

He says, “Is that all?”  
“Yes.” What else had he been expecting her to say? Jon doesn’t explain, and the silence becomes a third presence in the room. Sansa glances up toward the false stars overhead and in an effort to shatter the tension, says, “Maybe the new owners will have kids.”  
Suddenly Jon stands. Sansa looks up at him and catches only a glimpse of his surprisingly distraught expression, because he’s already in motion, halfway out of the room by the time she asks, “What’s wrong?”

She tears the tiara off her head, ripping out a few red strands of hair, then follows him downstairs. When he refuses to stop and look at her, she forcefully grabs him by the arm. The distance between them is small but feels unbreakable, like the force field creates when twin poles of magnets come too close. Meanwhile Ghost circles them silently, perhaps sensing the animosity between them but unsure to whom he owes his loyalty.

Sansa orders Jon, “Stop sulking and tell me what I’ve done to make you so furious.”  
He shakes off her hand. “You really don’t know?”

“No.”

“Jesus, Sansa. Fine. Are you really going to sell the house?”

“That’s the reason we’re here in the first place— yes!”

“Why?”

The explanation should come to her lips with less hesitation— hasn’t she deliberated over this for the better part of a year, calmly listed the reasons to herself? “Because— because I’m the only one who seems to put the slightest effort into actually maintaining this place. Because no one else seems to care. It’s too big, and drafty, and it snows in the middle of spring… And it should belong to a family.”

“Aren’t we a family?” Jon asks.

“We’re just playing house,” Sansa scoffs.

And even Ghost shies away from her then.

She retreats to a quiet, hollow part of the house, away from the fire, away from Jon. Here she can listen to the wind and watch the night grow blue all around her. She draws her legs up to her chest, rests her chin upon her knees— partly to conserve body heat, partly to comfort herself.

Why, after months of silence, had Jon asked her such a question _now,_ at the moment when she’s resigned herself to what needs to be done and finally summoned the courage to do it? How dare he make her feel guilty, how dare he make her feel hopeful?

But of course she knows that whatever anger she feels toward Jon is really just spite and regret and stupid longing. It’s nothing compared to the fury she feels toward herself whenever she thinks of the vulnerable expression on his usually-guarded face— _aren’t we a family?_

There are times when Sansa wishes she could still believe in the lies she tries to tell herself. She draws her knees tighter to her chest in a vain attempt to stop shivering.

The night is luminous indigo by the time Jon seeks her out. He’s a silhouette at the threshold of the almost black and empty room. “Are you really going to let yourself freeze to death just because you don’t want to apologize?”  
Sansa is so cold that she can feel every weary bone in her body. But she says nothing.

“Ned’s ghost will kill me if I let you get hypothermia,” Jon continues. Because of course that’s why he’s come for her now, why he came here at all— obligation, a misplaced sense of honor. Nothing more.

Her instinct toward melodrama is strong but the Stark resignation, if not desire, for survival is stronger. So Sansa gets up and shadows Jon back to the dining room. It’s like it was the previous night, the couch where she slept last night, Jon’s makeshift den of plaid and woolen blankets on the rug, closer to the fire. The half-empty bottle of something golden is new. Jon must have retrieved it from whatever’s left of the Starks’ former liquor cabinet. Sansa takes a few hearty swigs herself before she brushes her teeth. She has some vague intention of warming herself up, but it’s to no avail. Something in her chest is cold, like the mountaintops that are perpetually white-capped even in the summer, and fire or blankets or whiskey are no good against it.

Jon lies prone on the floor, facing the flames. She says to his back, “I’m sorry about earlier.”  
“Good.”

Sansa waits for him to mention something about keeping the house— why else would he be so incensed by the prospect of selling it?— but there’s only the sound of his breathing and the brittle song of wood snapping and breaking as it burns. She figures that Jon must no longer want to keep the house now.

Herself, she tries to stop wanting anything but sleep. But it seems as impossible as this storm ever ending, and she can’t stop shivering.

Eventually Jon notices. Of course he notices. He rolls over slowly, like he’s not trying to draw attention to it. Then without a word, he turns over the edge of the blanket, leaving a space for her illuminated by firelight, if she wants to take it.

Sansa meant to leave generous space between her body and Jon’s between the night, to not even let a lock of red hair trespass onto his side. But the morning sunlight finds them too close to ever claim the excuse that it was just to stay warm. She can’t determine whose fault it was— Jon’s arm is warm and possessive across her waist, their legs are so thoroughly tangled together that Sansa feels like she is _melting_ against his thigh.

But she’s the one who wakes up first so it’s her responsible to extract herself and make it seem like this never happened. Jon would only be embarrassed and stern about it, were he to know. So she restrains herself, rises from his side with vague notions of brewing coffee or shoveling. Making herself useful. She feels overwrought and feverish.

In this state, the prospect of stepping out onto the back porch— even in her socks instead of boots and a sweater instead of a proper coat— is tempting instead of foolish. Less foolish than staying inside with the bed and Jon, at least. Sansa watches the world liquefy— meltwater dripping down the eaves, the snow yielding, mist rising golden from the lake. She tries to will herself to be calm.

An arrow of geese is flying above, migrating back north, when the back door opens and Jon says, “Have you gone mad?”

“Come out, it’s nice,” she says. They’re both built to withstand a chill like this.

He won’t sit beside her, which she can’t fault him before, but stands in the doorway with his arms crossed, looking out at the same view as her. But now it’s not so compelling, not when Jon’s there with his beard slightly too long, his bedhead, the collar of his shirt dragged low so that she can see his collarbone.

Suddenly Sansa thinks: _he deserves to know._

So she says, “I’ve been thinking about how we rile each other up. Like why is that. Because sometimes you make me so angry. And I know I can make you angry too. And it’s not like that with anyone else. At least for me it’s not.”

Jon nods with cautious curiosity.

Sansa takes a breath, because once she says the words she cannot unsay them. She wants to do this right, she doesn’t want to hurt him. “Well, I care about what you think of me. More than anyone else. And I hate it when we fight but even then I— I love being with you. Whether we’re fighting or we’re quiet. I just like being close to you. I want to be close to you.”

His response is measured and slow. Part of Sansa doesn’t want him to answer her because every moment that he considers his words is another moment that she can imagine she’ll get what she wants. He says, “When I picture— what I was talking about before, the risk and peace and quiet. And family—” He stumbles over the word, then continues. “And family. It’s in this house. And it’s with you, it’s always with you.”  
His response is measured and slow but then the way he kisses her, it’s anything but.

So this is how it feels, Sansa thinks, with his mouth on hers and the pleasant drag of his stubble chafing her cheeks, his hands once again around her waist as she leans weak-kneed against him and he in turn leans against the strong walls of the house. It’s the pain of waiting too long outside in a blizzard, plunging through the ice and clawing back to the surface, hauling weary bones back home one last time. It’s being numb, frostbitten, blue. It’s survival but then it’s the fire waiting, the golden warmth and golden whiskey. It’s a safe place to collapse after the long hard thing that needed doing is done.

The roads are clear now but neither of them have any real desire to leave just yet— unless it’s a brief sojourn to the diner at the bottom of the mountain. Ghost happily pants in the bed of Jon’s truck. They’re all solemn silent at that one particular bend in the dirt road, then Sansa is singing along to the radio. Her hand is resting on the gearshift atop of Jon’s. While he places the order, including Sansa’s favorite— how long has he had it memorized?— she uses her newly charged phone to take yet another day off work, to call Bran and Arya and RIckon. “Maybe they’ll come,” she says to Jon when he returns.

“No rush,” he replies and Sansa blushes when she catches the meaning of his words.

“But maybe they’ll come,” she repeats. “And the house won’t feel so empty.”

“Maybe we’ll see the northern lights.”

“Maybe,” Sansa agrees.


End file.
